


Langjökull Lovin'

by Elleth



Series: Ladies Bingo 2017 [8]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Banter, F/F, Huddling For Warmth, Hypothermia, Implied Sexual Content, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 12:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14164755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: A glacier hike in Iceland turns serious when Sigrun and Tuuri are separated from their group. Luckily, they've got each other to keep warm.





	Langjökull Lovin'

"Uhhhh. Sigrun." Tuuri let her binoculars fall; they dangled uselessly around her neck. The situation that'd presented itself didn't inspire a lot of confidence in her, and the afterglow that had been rolling in warm waves through her was rapidly fading out, replaced with the feeling of apprehension, like a snowball melting down her back in icy trickles. 

"I don't like that tone," Sigrun squinted behind her tinted glasses, shaded her eyes with her hands, and squinted against the expanse of snow before them, under them, and all around them. "See them yet?" 

"No…" Just to be certain, Tuuri took up the binoculars again, training them on the base camp for good measure. "How long were we down there? It's at least half an hour's hike to get to where we started, right? Maybe longer. And the coaches are gone." 

"Are you fucking kidding me, Fuzzy?! Give that here!" Sigrun snatched the binoculars from Tuuri's hands and yanked the cord over her head for good measure; but when she looked the way Tuuri pointed and came to the same conclusion - no horses in the pasture by the base camp a little ways from the foot of Langjökull, and no coaches back to Reykjavík in the yard, none of the brightly-dyed hiking suits the rest of the group had been wearing anywhere on the glacier - she fell worryingly silent and continued to scan the area. Tuuri looked around without the binoculars. Even though they were far enough north for long days, mid-March in Iceland meant that night would come, and more than that, that the weather was just this side of unpredictable. Already a wind whipped at their coats and sent clouds of loose snow blowing over the ice, erasing any footsteps they might have followed. The gusts were freezing, biting at the few exposed areas of her face. Clouds were gathering where Tuuri thought the coast was, rolling in thick and dark from the sea. Probably darker-looking because of her sunglasses, but she wouldn't risk taking them off and going snow-blind in addition to being lost. 

Sigrun, whatever she'd been looking at, let loose a barrage of hideous curses in Norwegian, and hurled the binoculars away. They shattered an impressive distance from them on the ice. Tuuri winced and decided not to remind Sigrun that she might need to replace these whenever they made it back down. 

"So that means you can't get us down." Tuuri's heart beat high in her throat. Sigrun looked around like she was hoping to find some hapless straggler like themselves to murder just to blow some steam, but the glacier around them stayed as it was; vast, craggy, ranging from blue brilliantly clear blue ice in the cave behind them to off-white and brownish grey across the ice fields ahead, the colours of dirty late winter and impassable terrain. 

"No can do," she muttered through gritted teeth. "I probably could back home; we've done some glacier hiking for training just across the fjord, but… different glaciers. That's why you stay with the group, except if you want to step into some invisible crevice that'll eat you up just like a giant will. Chomp, gone, good luck getting out and not getting squashed to pulp. Easy, safe tour, my ass! We always went roped together, not like here, and got a guide with us who didn't abandon us like a ---" 

Her voice rose in volume, another notch. Tuuri stuffed gloved fingers into her ears to Sigrun's yelling, but it was impressively clear even so, bouncing along fissures and cracks in the ice in a hundred obscene echoes detailing just what body parts she hoped a toothless troll would slowly gnaw off their faithless guide, starting with his nose.

Tuuri waited until Sigrun was done, shifted from one foot to the other, and looked back toward the ice cave at the heart of their predicament. If they hadn't found themselves a cozy nook down there, just far enough out of the way that some light still filtered in to see Sigrun by, her open coat and pants, her red hair taking on an intriguingly purple shade in the blue light, and if Sigrun hadn’t backed her against the wall to return the favour… if they hadn't done that, they might be on the road back to Reykjavík by now, and back at their hotel by nightfall as the tour guide had promised. It wasn't that she regretted their detour - it'd been too nice for that - but she didn't favour waiting a day until they had the chance to make the descent with another group. 

She was grateful, at least, that there no longer were any pressing appointments with the Nordic Council. Technically they were all on standby while the expedition case was being reviewed by the higher-ups, but if they chose the next morning to recall them for another impromptu questioning, Tuuri supposed that would have to happen without them, and therefore would not happen at all. At least she couldn't see what good anything would do without either their Skald or their Captain.

"Sigrun?" 

"Grrmrrrrr…" 

"Did you tell anyone where you were taking me?" 

"Do you understand what 'surprise' means? Is that fuzz growing inward and eating your brain?" 

"Hey!" Tuuri took a breath to calm down, but even to her own ears her voice sounded scared and meek rather than angry. "So no one knows where we are, they aren't going to come back for us in the dark, we have no blankets or supplies or anything to make a fire with. We're going to freeze."

Sigrun slowly turned her head toward her, stiffly, and fixed Tuuri with an expression that Tuuri had hoped to never see again, outlined against the open sky with its peach-tinted sunset clouds as it was now, or against the dark vault of perpetual, moveless stars that hung over Tuonela. Even hidden behind scarf, flipped-up collar, low hat and safety helmet, Tuuri just knew that expression. She was grateful at least that Sigrun's sunglasses hid her eyes. 

"Come on," Sigrun said, her voice uncharacteristically low, now that her anger seemed to have evaporated. "Let's pick up some snow and head back into that cave. I'm not staying longer in this wind than we need to."

"Okay," Tuuri said. She felt like she should be able to tell what Sigrun was planning, but she followed Sigrun's lead instead. In a hollow not far from the cave entrance, they found a long trough of about Sigrun's height that held a good amount of drifted snow. She tested it for stability carefully, found it safe, and clambered down. By the time it was dark, they had emptied out a good deal of it, Sigrun reaching up armfuls of snow that Tuuri carried into the cave until she was sweating under her gear and Sigrun decided it was enough.

Tuuri stopped for a moment to catch her breath and survey their surroundings. The ice was eerily white in the moonlight filtering in between a sky full of drifting clouds, the land stretching out beneath the glacier was mostly dark, the base camp's windows unlit. Scatters of light in the distance meant some settlement there, and Reykjavík glowed with a warm light on the horizon. Tuuri wondered if the rest of the team was worried, sitting together by the fire in the lounge of their hotel suite, or if they simply assumed Sigrun had taken her for a night out somewhere. Onni would be worried, she was sure, if Reynir let her brother. He'd promised he'd keep him distracted with a grin that revealed more about the two of them than it hid, and that'd made Sigrun high-five him about how irresistible redheads must be to be to a certain Finnish family.

"Okay!" came Sigrun's voice from below, and a gloved hand appeared over the rim of the hollow. "If you're done stargazing, give me a hand up, Fuzzy?" 

Tuuri did, and the scrabbling sound of crampons on the ice followed as Sigrun climbed. Then, a curse, and Sigrun's hand slipped from Tuuri's grasp. With a noise of alarm, Tuuri threw herself down on her belly, reached across the rim into emptiness, and was greeted with a horrific flashback - Sigrun slipping, falling, crashing through the ice at the bottom of the trough, and vanishing in a splash of water. The only thing missing was a troll's tentacle lashing out of the water. 

Sigrun resurfaced spluttering and gasping; the curses came a moment later as she got her bearings and started treading water. 

"I'm okay - _dritt_ , this is cold! Take off your jacket and reach me down a sleeve! And stay down so I don't pull you in!" 

Tuuri was no longer sure how Sigrun made it out by the time she did, only that her movements had become sluggish then, and she was shaking like a leaf and fell forward into Tuuri's waiting arms, wet as she was. Tuuri pulled Sigrun's soaked coat off her, and wrapped her own much shorter one around her instead as she hurried Sigrun into the cave. 

"Okay, so what do we do with the snow?" Tuuri eyed the pile of it with trepidation. 

"I-i-i-ttttt…" Sigrun huffed in annoyance, but her teeth hadn't stopped chattering even as she stomped about and windmilled her arms for warmth. "I-i-nss-ul-l-atess. An-nn i-chh… IGLOO! _Drit-t-t!_ " 

"Okay! Can you hold on that long?" 

Sigrun nodded mutely, in itself a warning sign, wrapped Tuuri's coat more tightly around herself and resumed stomping. Tuuri worked as quickly as she could, but it didn't help that she had no idea how to actually construct an igloo, or even knew very well what it was, other than a snow-house of some sort that she remembered from learning Icelandic. By the time Tuuri had managed to build a shelter that looked somewhat like an upended bird's nest half against an ice wall, Tuuri's own fingers were shaking and numb in her gloves. It'd have to do. 

"Sigrun," she called, and the stomping steps came nearer again, out of some side corridor. Sigrun was already shedding her sodden clothes and let them fall with only the sound that half-frozen fabric could make. She made for the entrance Tuuri had left to crawl inside their makeshift shelter, and managed to sound just this side of impervious even through her chattering teeth.

"F-fuzzy-h-head, I-i-i don't w-w-want t-t-o tu-turn i-into an-n ice-b-block! G-g-get naked! M-move!" 

Tuuri dropped her own clothing with barely any pause, picked up both sets of clothing,and, lingered for a moment over Sigrun's bra and underpants; heat flowed back into her frozen cheeks. It was nothing fancy, she told herself, and Sigrun's choice in underwear wasn't even remarkable, it was all perfunctory no-frills unisex military-issue much like the things they'd been supplied on the expedition, or in Keuruu, and she'd done Onni and Lalli's laundry thousands of times without so much as thinking. But there was a voice in the back of her head that supplied helpfully that she wasn't sleeping with either her brother or cousin - or hoping for more. 

Tuuri scoffed, and, carrying their heap of clothes, crammed herself into the narrow space Sigrun left in their shelter. She hung her jacket over the entrance to seal the inflow of cold air, and squeaked in surprise when Sigrun's icy arms came around her, pulling her flush against her equally icy body, and Sigrun's lips came to rest against Tuuri's throat she tucked her nose into Tuuri's hair. She exhaled carefully, and Tuuri thought she could detect a note of relief in the sound, especially when Tuuri shifted to bring more of their skin into contact, close enough to feel all of the ripples of Sigrun's scars against her. By then she knew every story about every troll fight, so she didn't ask again, and eventually spread some of her dry clothes over themselves for more warmth, but under Tuuri's fingers, splayed over Sigrun's shoulder blades, her skin stayed pimply with goosebumps. The air was warming quickly in their little shelter, even lacking a fire, and Tuuri carefully began rubbing circles over Sigrun's skin, feeling it rise further in response, and eventually smoothe down. 

Sigrun's breath had become heavier - a cadence that Tuuri knew far too well, and loved far more than she maybe should. Sigrun moved around, shifting until Tuuri's thigh lay between hers. 

"Better?" Tuuri asked, trying to keep a hitch of laughter out of her voice. That… certainly was one place where Sigrun wasn't cold. 

"Mmm." The shiver had gone out of Sigrun's voice by then, and been replaced by Sigrun's tired, but content growl. "But I could use a little something extra to get warm… do your job, Fuzzy."

"That's… that's what got us here," Tuuri managed. She wanted to, but... "Is it a good idea?" 

"No one's coming for us for hours. I can do myself if you don't feel like it, let you watch…"

" - it's pitch-dark in here! A-and I want to!" 

"Come on, then. It's the best cure for hypothermia there is, that's what I know. Fun _and_ useful!" 

"Okay then…" Tuuri slipped her hands down Sigrun's back, giggling as she tipped her head up to find Sigrun's lips in the darkness, and found Sigrun meeting it eagerly. "... I'd hate to disappoint you. Make sure you stay warm..."

"... stay warm all that time until the morning…" 

Tuuri doubted that if they made good on that, they'd still be able to walk down the glacier when help came - but she'd worry about that when the time came.

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse the title... and many thanks to Kira for the beta! ♥ For the "Huddling for Warmth" square for Ladies Bingo.


End file.
